1952 Chevy Truck - The Big Five-O

Not as in climbing into the cab, but "into it"-a person can get into trucks at any stage of their life. For Ron Doty of Helena, Oklahoma, it was growing up as a child in a rural farming community of about 900 people. Since his teen years in the late '60s, Ron has owned his share of work trucks, but he never quite got around to building his own fully customized truck. Of course, that's if you don't count a bored-out 283 he stuffed into a '56 F-100 during the early '70s to raise a little hell. The string of stock trucks stopped when Ron hit "the big five-O." When Ron turned 50, he realized he was beginning to have the time and money he needed to build the wild custom truck of his dreams. With the decision made to build a hot-rod pickup, Ron put the word out that he was looking for a good core. One of his friends at work told him about an old truck sitting in a barn only two miles away from Ron's house. Not long after that, Ron had the '52 Chevy sitting in his garage torn down into a million pieces.

Starting with the engine, Ron and his friend Norman built a 350-inch Chevy small-block bored out to 355 inches. While the old saying "there's no replacement for displacement" holds true, Ron felt the motor needed a lot more than stock innards. Beginning with the ignition, a setup from MSD complemented a pair of Edelbrock heads and an intake manifold topped with a 750-cfm Demon carburetor. To pop the intake and exhaust valves wide open, they added a COMP hydraulic roller cam to assist the Demon with a set of Dynomax block hugger headers leading to a pair of Flowmaster mufflers. To complete the exhaust's look, Ron had the whole system ceramic-coated, but the finishing touch for the engine compartment was a super-trick FrontRunner serpentine system from Vintage Air. Ron figures he has about 430 horsepower leaving the engine into a beefed Turbo 350 automatic tranny featuring a host of B&M goodies, including a B&M 2,500-rpm stall torque converter.

With the drivetrain near completion, Ron turned his attention to the '52's exterior. He went with the less is more approach on the Chevy, having "Hub" Harness chop 2 1/2 inches out of the top. Keeping it simple was the name of the game for the front of the truck. Ron stuck with the original front sheetmetal by simply smoothing the seams and rechroming the stock grille. Around the sides and rear, the less is more approach is more prevalent-the door handles and tailgate were shaved, while the fenders were smoothed over. The gas filler was relocated to the bed floor to accommodate the gas tank relocated from the cab. With the truck ready for paint, Ron delivered the body in pieces to Laverne Kelley of Kelley's Customs in Enid, Oklahoma, for a custom finish to make his '52 come alive using a super-slick coating of Chrysler Inferno Red Pearlcoat by PPG.

To match the lowered theme initiated by Hub's chopped top, the front suspension was upgraded and dropped at the same time by grafting on a Monte Carlo front clip using Fatman Fabrications tubular control arms in conjunction with their drop spindles to slam the nose. Handling the demands of the mighty 430-horse mouse motor and providing the '52 with a rapid launch is a Ford 9-inch rearend packing 4.56:1 gears suspended via a ladder-bar setup with coilover springs from Competition Engineering.

Keeping it all rolling is a quartet of Weld Draglites. The front features skinny 15x4 Draglites wrapped in a pair of General Sportiva EM4s, while out back is where it gets serious with a set of 15x14 Draglites stuffed into huge Mickey Thompson 31x18.5x15 skins.

The last stage of Ron's 4 1/2-year project was his truck's interior. Behind a set of RodDoors' door panels, Ron installed a set of power windows from Specialty Power Windows (SPW), then looked to SPW again for their conversion kit to dump the '52's vacuum wipers in favor of electric wipers. Before Ron shipped his truck over to Larry's Upholstery in Enid, Oklahoma, he had the interior wrapped up to supply 12-volt current to a Vintage Air air-conditioning unit and Classic gauges. He completely rewired the truck with a wiring harness from the folks at Painless Performance Parts.

Well, thanks to a friend in Enid for letting Ron use his shop for 4 1/2 years, plus an understanding wife to put up with his 60-mile round-trip almost every day to build the '52, Ron and his wife have been hitting the shows, 27 so far, and the truck has placed at every one of them, including a Best Of Show in Dallas-not bad for a guy and his truck from a little ol' town in Oklahoma.